A Stitch in Haste

As background, Microsoft will be releasing its next generation video game system, the Xbox 360, on November 22. The retail price will be $398, but many stores have sold out even their pre-orders.

Which has led to quite a mania on eBay, where re-sale offers are running as high as $800. And in most cases, the eBay sellers must first wait for the units to be delivered to them before they can then resell them to the eBay buyers. Hence the eBay buyers might still be waiting for as much as two weeks after the November 22 release date before they get their systems. And they're willing to pay as much as a 100% premium above retail for the privilege.

Now I of course acknowledge that all tastes and preferences are subjective and that if you have nothing better to do with $400 (above the retail price) than using it to buy the status of "first on your block" to own an Xbox 360, then so be it and good for you. Isn't capitalism grand?

But three months from now, let alone three years from now, will anyone really care that you had your system a week before everybody else? Will you even be playing an Xbox 360 three years from now? Is it rational to spend money satisfying one's impatience? Or is it succumbing to an irrational impulse, comparable to feeding an addiction? Might you actually experience enough regret for your impulsive purchase to offset the utility you initially derived from your "first on the block" status?

Alternatively, could it be that there is a true "bubble" element here? Might people be paying exorbitant premiums on eBay today not for "first on the block" status, but rather with the expectation that they will be able to "flip" their system, which they don't even own yet, as the release date approaches and people become even more desperate to obtain a system before Christmas? Are these premium-paying eBay bidders just hoping to make a quick speculative profit? It will be interesting to watch the eBay pricing trend as the release date approaches and then passes.

Any predictions? Will Xbox 360 prices on eBay rise or fall between now and November 22? Between November 22 and Christmas? After Christmas? Do these astounding prices represent a "first on the block" premium or a speculative resale bubble?

More thoughts at Catallarchy.

POST SCRIPT: In case you're wondering, yes I intend to purchase an Xbox 360, but I will not pay a "first on the block" premium. I'll gladly wait a bit to pay retail, or less. Still, this will be my first video game system since my Atari 2600 as a kid, so theoretically I should be even more excited than those who are upgrading from a contemporary system.

One week ago I documented what appeared to be a speculative mania for the new Xbox 360 on eBay, where units were selling for as much as double the indicated retail price (in anticipation of a shortage for Christmas).

Well, I was all set to note that, after one week, the winning bids for the $398 units had fallen from $800 to under $600.

Then I won one myself for $430.

And, given that I will not have to pay New York's 8.625% sales tax, I'm actually getting it at a discount. Neat-o!

It seems to me that the debate over whether the 100% premium a week ago was a rational (or irrational?) "first on the block" surcharge or merely a speculative bubble has been resolved.

Now I just have to hope that I can figure out that weird controller unit -- I'm from the joystick generation.

And I expect all my onlime gamer readers to engage me in cyber-competition once I'm set up.

"I sense much gaming in you..."

"The shroud of the Xbox has fallen...begun the gaming has..."

"You have allowed this Xbox 360 to twist your mind until now...until now you have become the very thing you swore to blog against..."

"The words 'recreation' and 'enjoy' have no meaning to my programming..."
--Star Trek: The Motion Picture

A Wired commentator discloses his alternative lifestyle:

Let us praise the joys of double-wielding a pair of Uzis with unlimited ammo; let us delight in the gorgeous fractal carnage of a rocket launcher as it slams into your target. Let us talk openly about how just totally awesome it is to grab a fully loaded railgun in Quake 4 and wade into a mass of gibbering Strogg aliens and kill and kill and kill again, until there are guts on, like, the ceiling.
...
This is a subject that huge numbers of gamers feel strongly about, but are terrified of saying out loud. After all, we now live in an age where the pop-culture mainstream has decided that games are fascinating — but only the "complex," socially nuanced ones. Everyone moons over Will Wright's emotionally sophisticated Sims, and his impending, world-modeling Spore. Critics gush over the social valences of life inside World of Warcraft, or the cinematic scope of the Final Fantasy series, or the massive forking narratives of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

But when it comes to shooters — the Cro-Magnon sector of the gaming world? Everyone recoils. If only gamers would grow up, sigh the pundits, these infantile titles would finally vanish, and gaming would finally be respectable.

I concur fully. It's been four months since I ended my twenty-year video gaming hiatus by purchasing an Xbox 360 and I have to tell you, destruction is fun (though unlike the columnist I hate the railgun — too clumsy — and vastly prefer the rocket launcher and dark matter gun when slaughtering Strogg from a distance).

In any case, here are my reviews of the Xbox 360 games I've played thus far:

Five Stars — Buy Now and Buy New
--Quake 4: As addictive as crack; I've destroyed the Nexus at private, corporal and lieutenant levels and will soon embark as a "general."

--Call of Duty 2: Upside = killing Fascists. Downside = doing so as a Communist. I'm about half-way through the war, on easiest setting.

Four Stars — Buy Used on Ebay
--Ridge Racer 6: My first driving game since Spy Hunter in college. Fun and G-rated; some say it's not the best racing game. I have no basis for comparison. The "World Explorer" races get really hard about halfway through the map — very frustrating.

Three Stars — Borrow a Copy
--Perfect Dark Zero: Microsoft builds a mission-style shooting game. Enough said. Final mission is insurmountable (for me at least) even at beginner level. And the hero is actually a heroine — ick!

Two Stars — Opportunity Cost is Too Great
--Gun: Hard to get excited about shooting a rifle in the Wild West when you've been shooting your dark matter gun on Planet Stroggos.

One Star — WTF?
--Kameo: A fairy-pixie traveling through a wondrous fantasy-land. Sorry, but I'm not gay enough for that. Chucked it after 20 minutes.

What games do you play now or did you play in your youth?

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My single biggest disappointment with the Xbox 360 has been the online gaming. I admit it, I totally suck at it. "Suck" isn't even an adequate word — "hypersuck" is closer to accurate. I can't even begin to compete with these kids on any game I try to play online. (And boy do they have foul mouths!) The difference between single-player and multi-player gaming is like the difference between figure skating and ice hockey. Oh well, I guess my descent into isolated sociopathy will progress undeterred.

Inside the Vault = An intermittent string of weekend posts detailing aspects of my personal life.

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This is wrong on so many levels:


Still, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is getting pretty rave reviews, so I'll give it a whirl. It should be a good, light-sabered light-hearted change from the awesome intensity of Prey.



What games are you folks playing these days?

Having achieved all I'm likely to in "LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy," it is time for another Xbox 360 game.

We Xbox, you decide:

F.E.A.R.:

I tried the demo and the game reminds me an awful lot of "Condemned: Criminal Origins," which was interesting but very slow with a completely unresolved ending. Should I give this FPS sub-genre a second chance?

The Godfather:

This reminds me of "Hitman: Blood Money," which totally sucked. It also seems that "The Godfather" is mostly an "open-world" game rather than the linear progression that I prefer. Still, it is The Godfather (albeit without Al Pacino), so how can I refuse?

Cast your vote in the comments, along with any reviews of other games you'd like to share.

I received an email from Microsoft recently reminding me that my annual Xbox Live Gold membership will be autorenewing soon. Having dabbled with online mulitplayer gaming for almost a year across various games, I've concluded that I don't like it and don't want the Gold membership anymore.

However, to cancel the autorenewal of XLG, you have to call Microsoft; there is no way to do so online. You can sign up online; you can change your credit card online; you just can't cancel online.

Sound familiar?



Keep in mind that the Xbox 360 only recently celebrated its one-year anniversary, so such renewal emails are only just starting to be received and annual memberships are only now being canceled — or attempted to be canceled.

There is one and only one reason to deny subscribers who can enroll online the ability to cancel online: to subject them to the "AOL Effect." How obnoxious will Microsoft representatives be when membership churn starts to materialize?

I for one won't find out: I may have a contract with Microsoft, but I also have a contract with American Express. And that contract entitles me to "pre-block" any future charges from a particular vendor (which was also how I circumvented AOL's sadism many years ago).

Meanwhile, such "roach motel" tactics (i.e., you can check in but you can't check out), and other cancel-hostile subscription policies, are depressingly common:

AOL
BlueMountain.com
Classmates.com
ESPN
MSN Internet [sic!]
Napster.com
NetZero
Real Rhapsody
Real SuperPass
True.com

all received "Big Hassle" ratings from PCWorld magazine. EarthLink, Equifax, Flickr, GameSpy, MLB, Netflix and RapidFax received "Some Hassle" ratings.

So, for discussion: Just how "un-libertarian" would it be to suggest a law requiring any company that offers online enrollment for subscription services to also offer online cancellation? How would the Posnerian "law and economics" types likely feel about such a law?

And also feel free to share (online — no phone calls please) your cancellation nightmares in the comments.

I've been asked by two separate readers now whether I saw the Wired story suggesting that a new shooter game for the Xbox 360, Bioshock, is inspired by Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged and whether I have played the game or intend to.

The answers are "yes," "no" and "yes," respectively.

This trailer does not strike me as particularly Randian:


But this review does:


The fictional creator of the Bioshock city ("Rapture") is named Andrew Ryan — a little anagrammatic fun there? The main character's helper, who guides him by radio, is named "Atlas."

But if the underwater "Galt's Gulch" was a failure (which it clearly was), then how pro-Rand can it be?

More:

He's a man of bottomless ambition who built a city under the sea, obsessed with the idea of what makes a man, what differentiates a man from a slave. He's the Randian hero, a man who holds his own creative vision above all else, and he's [Crime and Punishment's] Rodion Raskolnikov's exceptional person, someone who can be excused for committing crimes to achieve a noble goal, or at least with noble intentions — and he knows it. His vision, Rapture, is clearly a colossal failure. The driving force behind the game is your quest to discover why this man's alluring vision of an artistic utopia failed so completely and why you've stumbled upon it.

Sound's more like Krugmanesque socialized medicine than Galt's Gulch.

I will buy the game after my upcoming vacation, not out of any Randian obsession but simply because first-person shooters are the only Xbox game I ever play, and new releases are few and far between.

So I will report back once I figure out just how Randian this game really is.

Anyone who has already played the game, feel free to weigh in.